BELMONT – Belmont Abbey College’s women’s soccer team won on Monday to advance to the Conference Carolinas tournament semifinals for the 17th straight season.

On Thursday at 2 p.m. at home against Limestone, the Lady Crusaders will be pursuing an eighth straight finals appearance.

And, after Monday’s 4-0 victory over Converse, Abbey coach Mike Lynch is happy his team regained some of the winning ways it had lost late in the season.

“What was important to me was that we got our momentum back a little bit,” said Lynch, whose team lost three of its last five regular season games. “We were confident in our play today. In championship play, you want everybody to bring their ‘A’ game. We were pretty close to that today.”

After Meghan Philip scored on the first of Kristin Foster’s three assists 23 minutes into the game, Ananda Gebreyesus scored twice (both on Foster assists) in a three-minute stretch early in the second half to end any doubt about the outcome.

Simone Melvin tallied the final goal in the 89th minute.

The Abbey (10-9), which is seeded second in the eight-team tournament, outshot the visiting Valkyries (7-10-20 by a 25-2 margin and had 15 corner kicks to four for Converse.

Still, Lynch felt Converse had some early opportunities that could’ve caused some anxiety – and is hopeful those near-misses will motivate his team in the future.

“They could’ve had a couple of goals early,” Lynch said. “So we have to shore up some stuff.”

Keeper Hannah Kohls, defender Alana Ryczek and midfielders Jillian Lang and Madison Sully led the shutout, which was the Lady Crusaders’ seventh of the year and sixth against league opposition.

Among those shutouts was a 3-0 victory at Limestone on Sept. 15 in the regular season meeting with the Saints.

Limestone advanced to Thursday’s semifinal with a 2-1 home overtime victory over Mount Olive.

“They had a very good, fast forward and a very good center midfielder,” Lynch said of Limestone. “I think it’s going to come down to our stopping that forward and neutralizing that midfielder.”